I think at the rate Apple is going with the Profit comparisons you are mentioning. They need to have an Apple Pro (company or division) and Apple Consumer (company). Because at this rate, they will have 3 products, an iPad/Tablet/Laptop combination circa 2015, an iPhone, and an Apple TV box with Display Options or combined. With no other products except Apps. Because those (hardware) make all the money.

My thing tho is I truly think Apple always needs to have a top of the line Mac(hine) for the Man who wants to buy it and install Xcode only and compile code as fast as "almost" currently possible and only have 1 machine. I just don't see the feeling of getting a sub-par iMac with benchmarks almost always half of what the top of the line tower can crank out.

I think when you loose this specific pie wedge of the Market/Industry, it's like a dam with a hole in it, and eventually unless they plug it with something, it may bust, I mean think about it, they want developers to make apps (iOS, OS X) and you need compile times to be fast. Developers would fill that void with hackintoshes. Guaranteed. So that small market, even tho its smaller money makes you loose people, smart people, the people Apple likes to partner with for bigger projects and networking (human) for projects of the future. Not to condescend, but the average iMac user with an iPhone who has a non-Technology job is not Apple's regular business partner. The power hungry ones are...

The Mac Pro died the day Apple removed "computer" from their name. Yes, that's figuratively speaking. But seriously the Mac Pro hasn't seen an update in almost two years. The least Apple could have done is updated the line to include Thunderbolt. The MacBook Pro has had Thunderbolt for over a year. Why not the Mac Pro? Why professionals cling to the Mac is beyond me. It's obvious Apple has little interest in them. Apple isn't the powerhouse it is today because of their computers.

And as I understand it, if the CPUs aren't there, there's little point in doing so—especially if it becomes more and more apparent that the CPUs will be delayed until Ivy Bridge, which will take another redesign.

Because they've been holding out on redesigning the main logic board until the new processors come out.

And you know this how?

analogika wrote:

We can keep running in circles, but until somebody weighs in who can assess whether adding Thunderbolt to current-gen Mac Pro logic boards is feasible, we won't get anywhere.

As I said: The Mac Pro was dead the moment Apple removed "computer" from their name. There's nothing preventing Apple from incorporating Thunderbolt into the Mac Pro except their commitment to do so. Thunderbolt is a high end technology. Perfectly suited for the Mac Pro. The fact every other Mac has it except the Mac Pro is telling. It says Apple isn't behind the pro market any longer.

A complete redesign to add an I/O option? I would hope such a move would be unnecessary. I/O should be independent of processor. If not Apple designed it wrong.

Don't blame Apple, blame Intel. Intel has stated in the past that Thunderbolt can't be retrofitted to previous chipsets. The chipset and CPU that will go in the next Mac Pro, if there is one, just started shipping.

And, like others have said, it's far less pressing on the Mac Pro than it is on the other hardware.

I don't have a lot of confidence in Apple's high-end plans for the future, but I also get annoyed by hyperbolic hand-wringing like "The Mac Pro died the day Apple removed 'computer' from their name." We don't know that until there is an announcement. If there is a new Mac Pro, it will probably show up in the next month or two, but for now Apple is still actively selling the current Mac Pro. It's in the stores and everything. And other Mac hardware is more usable for professional purposes than ever before. My new MBP handily outbenches any machine a "pro" could buy just three years ago, in just about any task, including the oh-so-demanding Xcode compiling.

The thing that bothers me about Apple these days, is their increasing obsession over iOS. It appears they're seeing it as the defining feature of the company, and OS X has come to resemble it. Five years ago, the gadgets were a trickle down benefit. Today, they seem more like the crown jewel; the heart of the Apple ecosystem... and the higher end items look like they're being redeveloped to accomodate iPhones and iPads. I really do think that they perceive computers as potentially unnecessary for many people, and the thing is, they may be right. Lots of people I know are happy enough, just to have their phones and go on Facebook. That's the "Post-PC Era", I guess...

I don't have a lot of confidence in Apple's high-end plans for the future, but I also get annoyed by hyperbolic hand-wringing like "The Mac Pro died the day Apple removed 'computer' from their name." We don't know that until there is an announcement. If there is a new Mac Pro, it will probably show up in the next month or two, but for now Apple is still actively selling the current Mac Pro. It's in the stores and everything. And other Mac hardware is more usable for professional purposes than ever before. My new MBP handily outbenches any machine a "pro" could buy just three years ago, in just about any task, including the oh-so-demanding Xcode compiling.

I agree there is too much hyperbole as well about the Mac being abandoned by Apple. The reason Apple is sucking the profit out of the entire mobile industry with iOS is because of their years of experience in desktop OS's and machine integartion which they leveraged to create a mobile computing OS that disrupted the whole industry. The reason why we've all watched the big mobile companies collapse the last few years like Nokia, RIM and Motorola is because they lacked the ability to build the whole widget in one simple yet functional device. Nokia did have their own OS but it looked like a mess you get when engineers run amok much like Google which is making a good go of it because they have some serious engineering chops being thrown at Android but the same reason that makes Apple's laptops so attractive is doubly important in the mobile arena which is hardware and software integration. If Apple were to ever jettison the Mac they would lose what makes them unique and fundamentally the core building block of future platform creation and development with it. What would they develop their own software on or what would they recommend 3rd party devs use? Dell's, HP's... I don't think so.

A complete redesign to add an I/O option? I would hope such a move would be unnecessary. I/O should be independent of processor. If not Apple designed it wrong.

Don't blame Apple, blame Intel. Intel has stated in the past that Thunderbolt can't be retrofitted to previous chipsets. The chipset and CPU that will go in the next Mac Pro, if there is one, just started shipping.

Depends on what you want: just I/O or video too.Video support might not be possible with a discrete graphics card -- which all Mac Pro have, IIRC.

But I/O wise, the Thunderbolt controller is just a PCIe device. Should be a straightforward addition to any PCIe based design. In theory, you could even have an add-on PCIe card with Thunderbolt ports.

The thing that bothers me about Apple these days, is their increasing obsession over iOS. It appears they're seeing it as the defining feature of the company, and OS X has come to resemble it. Five years ago, the gadgets were a trickle down benefit. Today, they seem more like the crown jewel; the heart of the Apple ecosystem... and the higher end items look like they're being redeveloped to accomodate iPhones and iPads. I really do think that they perceive computers as potentially unnecessary for many people, and the thing is, they may be right. Lots of people I know are happy enough, just to have their phones and go on Facebook. That's the "Post-PC Era", I guess...

It's like 1984, all over again.

In five to ten years, this worry will seem utterly silly. Yeah, it's a prediction. Nail me down on it.

A complete redesign to add an I/O option? I would hope such a move would be unnecessary. I/O should be independent of processor. If not Apple designed it wrong.

Don't blame Apple, blame Intel. Intel has stated in the past that Thunderbolt can't be retrofitted to previous chipsets. The chipset and CPU that will go in the next Mac Pro, if there is one, just started shipping.

Depends on what you want: just I/O or video too.Video support might not be possible with a discrete graphics card -- which all Mac Pro have, IIRC.

But I/O wise, the Thunderbolt controller is just a PCIe device. Should be a straightforward addition to any PCIe based design. In theory, you could even have an add-on PCIe card with Thunderbolt ports.

I also know another associate working for a Cloud provider and can tell you that Pixar and Dreamworks are pushing their rendering to the cloud.

This doesn't work for things requiring real-time performance, e.g. video color grading, interactive 3D modeling (as opposed to rendering). It also doesn't scale down very well, because the kind of Internet bandwidth required to make it workable has a pretty high minimum cost. We're a boutique post production facility, and it would cost us far more to obtain Internet access fast enough to sling DPX frames into the cloud and back at reasonable speed than it does to buy and maintain a number of Mac Pros on the premises. There are still significant use cases for powerful workstations you can access locally.

If the Mac Pro is really dead, there will be no reasonable alternative to migrating a fair bit of what we do to Windows workstations, as much as that will annoy me.

Apple's pulling the remote kill switch on the 2006 Mac Pros? Or do you mean that they'll continue working, except that you can't run the latest dumbed- and locked-down OS, which you wouldn't want to run anyway because you're a pro?

Apple's pulling the remote kill switch on the 2006 Mac Pros? Or do you mean that they'll continue working, except that you can't run the latest dumbed- and locked-down OS, which you wouldn't want to run anyway because you're a pro?

OH NOES I HAS ONE EXTRA BUTTON TO CLICK WHEN SETTING UP MY MACHINE THAT I WILL USE FOR YEARS AND YEARS AND YEARS HOW WILL I EVER GAIN BACK THAT .0001 SECONDS!?

Not to mention within a couple of months of being extinct, unless there's a major reversal regarding 10.8.

10.8? what does that have to do with anything? If the MP's come out soon it will be with a "special" version of whatever the current OS ver is for drivers etc. This is generally how it is done. However, I am now leaning on the side of MP is going to soon be toast unfortunately.

Not to mention within a couple of months of being extinct, unless there's a major reversal regarding 10.8.

10.8? what does that have to do with anything? If the MP's come out soon it will be with a "special" version of whatever the current OS ver is for drivers etc. This is generally how it is done. However, I am now leaning on the side of MP is going to soon be toast unfortunately.

You registered to respond to a post you misunderstood?

His machine will be unsupported by 10.8, unless there is a major reversal.

Not to mention within a couple of months of being extinct, unless there's a major reversal regarding 10.8.

It would work just fine with 10.7 and that's enough. I don't know why it's so badly misbehaving but I need a working desktop. The mini doesn't cut it and I'm not buying a MacPro that hasn't been updated in two years. Won't buy an iMac because replacing the HD is a pain in the ass. Frankly, I'm beyond annoyed with Apple at this point. I get it, the future is not in the traditional computer but dammit, it's what I use to right now to do A LOT of things at home and work and until the future arrives, I need a damned desktop!!!